Posted on 01/02/2016 12:29:51 PM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
Like millions of other consumers, Evan Hartstein was fed up with pay TV.
The 40-year-old father of two was paying nearly $250 a month for a bundle of phone, high-speed Internet and hundreds of cable channels that he and his family barely watched.
So Hartstein and his wife recently ditched their standard cable TV subscription and instead signed up for Sling TV, Netflix and a few other streaming services. Their monthly bill was cut in half.
"I got to the end of my rope," said Hartstein, of Scottsdale, Ariz. "I just wasn't getting the value out of it. We'd watch maybe 10 channels total. Why do that when there's this whole world out there where you can pick and choose just the stuff you want?"
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I’d consider cutting the cord if I could pick up local stations with an antenna, which I cannot. And if it didn’t mean giving up my NFL Sunday Ticket. So I both stream and use satellite TV, with premium channels. Feels so good.
This may be looked back upon as the golden age of choice in viewing. Consolidation is coming.
Cutting the cord was one of the best decisions we made in a long time. I rarely miss it, especially when considering the money we’re saving.
Why get cable or other options? It makes no sense to pay for something that's available for free.
Cable’s always been a greedy racket. Free market will wipe them out.
I cut the cord 18 months ago. Haven’t looked back since. This is what I did:
1.) Replaced TV’s in the house with Smart TV’s with Wi-fi. If you don’t want to do this then you can purchase a Roku stick ($50) which transforms your non-smart TV into a Wi-fi TV capable of using apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. All that is required is an HDMI port.
2.) Transferred my entire DVD collection to the cloud using the VUDU service. They are owned by Walmart and for $5 ($2.50 if they are still running their special which cuts the price in half for every 10 DVDs you transfer) I purchased a digital copy, and upgraded to HDX quality (their version of Blu-Ray).
3.) Got Netflix, Amazon Prime (already had it for the shipping) and VUDU.
After about $1,500 in initial expenditures for TV and transferring DVD’s I cut out DirecTV. So it’s paid for itself. DirecTV at $150/month was $1,800/year.
My recurring costs are $60/month for internet from Charter, and Netflix. $99/year for Amazon prime. You can do this cheaper by foregoing the VUDU portion if you want to physically hold on to your DVD’s.
With the Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime options (there are others), you can stream on demand pretty much all the TV shows and movies you will ever have the time to watch. Sure, you are not going to see the current season on most shows but I never saw the big deal. I finished shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men" a year or two after they ended on TV and never felt like I missed out on anything.
The choices on movies are a little weaker but I don't mind spending the $3 for view on demand once in a while.
All of this is commercial free.
I miss live NFL football but if there's a game I really want to watch, I'll go to a local sports bar or over to a friend's house. In fact, I have friends who are football nuts who gave me an open invitation to come on over anytime there's a game on and I always bring a 12-pack of beer with me and some snacks for them so they like having me over. But one of my favorite ways to see a game now is to go down to the Buffalo Wild Wings and gorge on chicken wings and beer for a few hours. Then I come home to a quiet and clean house.
What I like best about streaming over cable is that wherever I am in the house, I can bring up a show or movie. On my laptop, my tablet or even my smartphone. With a set of headphones, it's actually a more immersive experience than watching a television from across the room. Then when I stay in hotels (which I do often for business), all I need is an internet connection and I'm in business. I never even turn the hotel TV on.
It's also the same with music. Despite having a massive music collection that took me over 30 years to build, I can so easily stream whatever I want through Spotify, Pandora or Apple Music. I'll never buy another record album again.
My dvd collection is 95 percent vintage TV and movies.
I could live without cable TV but the spouse is big on wasteful sports. At least the bill isn’t in my name.
1500 channels and there’s nothing on.
Heck there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube for free.
I have both Netflix and Amazon FireTV. The eight bucks a month for Netflix is trivial and as much as I use Amazon.com, after getting free shipping, the TV app seems free, too. You can also stream a massive collection music with Amazon, included with Prime.
Sony’s new thing called Crackle might be something to look into but it’s in a primitive stage right now.
Yup! Cutting the cable makes sense for some, some not. I have done without many times, mostly if I couldn’t afford it or if it kept kids from homework.
Empty nest now, Mrs p6 and I don’t go out much and choose to have cable. $180/ month for hundreds of channels plus great phone and 100mbs internet. Expensive yes but I can watch live harness racing from the local track..I don’t bet...and things like the Pennsylvania Farm Show live..starts next week...and live coverage of state government. I could watch the farm show online but the cost offsets just having cable.
The movies and sports are nice but not a deal breaker.
We have Xfinity X1 service and the remote is also a huge plus!
Oh and the DVR that records 6 channels, Mrs p6 uses that a lot!
All that said if I was young with kids or couldn’t afford it there would be no problem cutting the cord.
How does one get Fox News?-not that I like Ted Baxter.
This is us. I’d love to cut the cord but with 5 tv watchers from Bubble Guppies to out of state college and pro sports watchers.... DISH is so awesome. We have two hoppers and several joeys and can thus watch anything in any room, can stream, can watch premium stuff on demand, and all prime time shows are on the hard drive automatically for 2 weeks. It’s not that expensive and it does it all. We also do Netflix. But we have zero trouble ever with DISH and we’ve had it at three addresses for well over a decade.
Very true. This was the compromise in the family for a cable bill-free home. Not too mention that I no longer give money to the faggots on BRAVO and LOGO.
That’s one of the things I found when we cut the cord. There is so much good stuff on YouTube - documentaries, how-to, news, etc. With the Roku, it comes right through the TV.
We got an antenna for a few local stations, and subscribed to a couple of the Hulu - Plex-type services. We got tired of Fox after the first debate, but get OAN now. We really don’t miss much at all, and are saving about $125 per month.
(My husband isn’t much of a sports nut, so YMMV.)
-JT
Comcast makes it a hassle to cut...right now I’m not paying my full bill and they’re calling me to tell me I better pay up...I think...I don’t answer their calls...next week I’ll make the trek to their office and dump them
I just wish a group of conservative/libertarian types like Breitbart/Alex Jones would form a good news TV available on Roku streaming. OAN is ok, but kinda boring.
Few people appreciate the immensity of choice on Youtube. They think it’s all cat vids.
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